The String Doctors mix jazz, humor

Flooding a near-full room with uplifting squeals and superb, symphonic sounds – descending solely from fiddle, bass, mandolin and guitars — The String Doctors were fast to dispense a delightful cure for the winter blues at Saturday night’s concert at Sturges-Young Auditorium.

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By Laura Kurella

Sturgis Journal - Sturgis, MI

By Laura Kurella

Posted Mar. 11, 2013 at 1:00 PM

By Laura Kurella
Posted Mar. 11, 2013 at 1:00 PM

Flooding a near-full room with uplifting squeals and superb, symphonic sounds – descending solely from fiddle, bass, mandolin and guitars — The String Doctors were fast to dispense a delightful cure for the winter blues at Saturday night’s concert at Sturges-Young Auditorium.

Opening with a blues sounding, “Do you Miss New Orleans,” The String Doctors quickly revealed just how talented this group of well-seasoned, professional musicians are.

Peter Knupfer, an accomplished fiddle-player who “sun” lights as a history professor at MSU, showed remarkable expertise on what he endearingly referred to as his “country fiddle,” as did jazz bassist, Dave Hay, who was filling in for ailing String Doctor bassist, Dave Rosin.

The soft-spoken Ray Kamalay demonstrated his gifts on guitar and the group’s first bend toward humor by introducing, “The Tattooed Lady,” a song written for Groucho Marx.

With super silly lyrics, made more humorous by the String Doctor’s delivery, the crowd soon found itself flirting with bouts of uncontrollable, uproarious laughter while hearing such lyrics as, “Oh Lydia, oh Lydia, say, have you met Lydia? Lydia The Tattooed Lady. She has eyes that folks adore so, and a torso even more so. Oh Lydia The Queen of Tattoo!”

Speaking to the crowd for the first time, band leader and master guitarist Joel Mabus said, “We do hillbilly and we do swing and since I grew up in Southern Illinois, which I consider the deep Midwest, I wrote this anthem for Midwesterners.”

His song, which offered lyrics like, “If you live life in the middle and not on the edge, you are hopelessly Midwestern. If you like Gerald Ford almost as much as you like Betty, a big corn field looks mighty pretty, and you’d rather go to hell than to New York City, you’re hopelessly Midwestern.”

Jumping all over the musical genre map, featuring everything from soft and soothing to silly, the String Doctors strummed up a buffet of beats so varied there was a little something to satisfy everyone’s tastes.

Notable songs like “Sweet Georgia Brown” featured a violin come fiddle solo so delightful it stirred spontaneous applause and one of the silliest stories of the evening came from Mabus, who told of a very simple UP fellow who won a fancy-looking toilet brush at a local raffle.

Mabus said when he asked the fellow what he thought of his new, fancy toilet brush, the fellow replied, “Well, it sure brightens up my privy but I think I’m going to go back to using toilet paper!” – A punch line that made the audience burst into laugher.

Page 2 of 2 - After a brief intermission, the group filled the second act with toe tapping tunes like “Dina,” “Miss the Mississippi and You,” and the very humorous song, “I like Stinky Cheese.”

The mood in the room suddenly shifted as the opening chords to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” were heard.

Touching and heartfelt, their rendition of this classic hit can easily be described as moving.

With fingers sliding smoothly over a mandolin’s tightly-tuned strings, Mabus plucked out this tune in enchanting tones that - when feathered by Knupfer’s fluttering fiddle and Hay’s low-booming bass — gave this old song a new-found gracefulness that moved the entire audience to complete stillness and total silence.

Filling the remainder of the evening with more eclectic hits, The String Doctors closed with an old American folk song, “Don’t let your deal go down,” which garnered an energetic, standing ovation.

“The show offered something for everybody,” said Connie Griffith of Sturgis in an interview after the show.

“The music, while all stringed instruments, each added their own texture, like fabric, that wove together beautifully. What a great show!”